The Lonely Moon by DanCan
The Moon is coming!
When astronomers noticed the moon getting a bit closer, they thought it was cute. "The Moon is lonely!", they said. "It's coming to give us a hug!". Only you understood what it means - that if the Moon gets too close, then the Earth's days are numbered...
Once you realised what to do, you quickly founded a start-up to build satellites and rockets, with the secret goal of building the ultimate space ship - The Ark. The Ark will be the ship to sail civilisation to another world (and most importantly, save you). The plan is simple - you will put satellites into orbit, and use the income they generate to fund research and development for The Ark. But be warned - things might not go quite to plan. Your satellites could collide and create fields of debris. The moon's gravity could modify your trajectories, and send your satellites spinning away. Antagonistic space agencies could shoot you down, and really ruin your day. You might quickly find yourself running out of space...
Instructions
The objective of the game is to build The Ark and to sail it all the way to outer space. Good luck! :rocket:
The Shop
You can buy things (including satellites) with the shop. If you have enough bitcoin to spend, click a satellite and it will start building. Once the build is complete, it will launch from Earth.
Hover the mouse over the items in the shop to find out more about it - like how long it takes to build, and the starting income. Special shop items have usage instructions in their hover-text.
If you don't have any bitcoin, you can always hold a press conference to try and raise some money.
Orbital Play
When a satellite launches, it will appear on a rocket and slowly head into orbit. You can select a satellite by creating a selection box around it with the mouse. Once selected, you can control the satellite by pushing 'W' to speed up and 'S' to slow down. The orbital trajectory is shown as a blue line, and the satellite target region is shown as a green ring. The satellite statistics are shown in the info box in the bottom-right of the screen (including fuel/delta-V remaining).
Remember, satellites will only make money while they are in their target area, and you have to move them there yourself! Your satellites income will decrease over time as they wear out, but you can boost your income by creating constellations of the same satellite type.
You'll receive notifications in the top-right of the screen when something interesting happens, like your satellite getting smashed to bits. Keep an eye on these. You can also view statistics about the whole game by opening the "Orbital Statistics" screen. You can find that button in the bottom-left of the screen.
Endgame
If you manage to make enough money before the moon gets too close and starts wreaking havoc, then you can launch The Ark! To win, simply sail it out to the target region.
| HTML5 (web) | https://thelonelymoon.github.io |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/the-lonely-moon |
Ratings
| Overall | 924th | 3.083⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1068th | 2.708⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 752th | 3.021⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 878th | 3.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 806th | 3.104⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 754th | 2.286⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 690th | 2.4⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1014th | 2.5⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
But when I discovered the purpose of the "W" and "S" keys, it was really fun.
The mechanic of controlling the trajectory of each satellite and managing them all is well thought out!
Overall very nice and innovative entry!
It was pretty hard to get into, but I eventually got better at it. You made pretty good use of the theme.
Well done folks.
@wrenpirate The reason you can't change trajectory after a while is that they run out of "Delta-V" which roughly corresponds with fuel. You can see the Delta-V fuel gauge in the bottom right of the screen in the info box.
The laser satellites do have too much drag, so they crash unfairly quickly. Sorry about that! Most people lose the first few laser satellites each game - the trick is to wait until just after the rocket detaches and then hold W until your orbit expands, then coast around to the other side and circularise. If you haven't learned that trick from KSP or Orbiter or something then it's pretty impossible to know what to do.
Thanks again to everyone who has played and rated, it looks like a tutorial is the most needed thing for the next version.
build a Libretro game in 48 hours. Now that I have a lot of the technical
details sorted out, I'm hoping to spend more time focusing on actual gameplay
next LD.
I really like your game. It's a lot of fun and the core concept works very
well.
Quick heads-up, I intentionally glossed over the front-matter for the game.
Some of the feedback I'm about to give is from the perspective of a player that
hasn't carefully read through anything before jumping in.
---
For anyone who's played a clicker, I think the shop layout is going to be far
less intuitive than it should be. There are a few too many ques that suggest
clicker gameplay-- some number that's increasing, some eye-candy that doesn't
(initially) seem interactive, a series of buttons that are increasing in value,
and the first couple buttons are entirely "increase the number" buttons.
By the time I launched a satellite, I was just slamming.buttons without worrying
too much about the hover-text or what was going on with the main screen. Based
on my previous experience with clickers, I figured that the satellites exploding
was normal and random.
I can see from the comments that I'm not the only one who went down this path,
so I figure I'll share my own perspective on what's going on that's getting
people stuck on the clicker track of mind.
First, the game starts with something that's totally not part of the primary
game mechanic. Something simple that I think is worth trying-- bump the
player's starting money to 150 btc. If I had three options at the beginning,
I doubt I would have been so quick to assume that the game is a clicker.
Second, the shop is ordered strictly by increasing cost. My
clicker-monkey-brain just assumed that the different types of things were just
associated with different eye-candy. If these were grouped (investors, defense,
satellites, goal), even without labels, it would have given me pause to wonder
why they are grouped that way.
Third, debris is incredibly subtle, at first. Even with the pop-up
notifications to tell me that a satellite collided with debris, it took me quite
a while to figure out that the dots weren't just a graphical effect and were
indeed bad. I really wish I had some ideas for what could be done about this,
but I'm totally drawing a blank here.
Fourth, the instruction / how to play short-text leaves no question about The
Ark, but doesn't stress the main gameplay mechanic (moving satellites into
orbit).
---
Outside of the whole clicker thing, I have a couple more quick thoughts.
Moving the moon distance out of the statistics view and onto the main screen
would likely increase presence of an important game object that's otherwise
completely invisible at the start of the game.
Laser satellite has a controller hint / reminder in the hover text. More of
that would be awesome.
I'm going to stop rambling now.
Where should I keep an eye out for your game?
---
"a laser was destroyed colliding with Debris!"